Lifeline
by guineapiggie
Summary: "Your mum's name was Sarah. You used to wear newspapers in your shoes." Reciting facts about Steve Rogers is a very old habit of Bucky's. [one-shot, rated T for language, mentions of torture, PTSD and violence; no slash]


**Lifeline**

 **DISCLAIMER:** I do not own anything, everything is with their rightful owners.

 _ ***A/N***_ If thinking about POW-Bucky doesn't make you want to cry enough, listen to "Somebody to Die for" by Hurts. It's had a heavy influence on this whole idea, and it's a perfect fit.  
It's also repeatedly broken my heart, but if you've come here to read this then you're like me and you want that to happen.

* * *

They say the war is a glorious thing but the truth is it's a goddamn fucking mess and if you're lucky, you get to be a sniper so at least you won't get as much blood on you – that is the first thing he's learned.

He's been overseas for a little less than a month, only two proper battles according to his comrades, and already he's lost count of how many people he's killed.

He's fallen into a routine, he lets the rifle in his hand take over, he's a good shot, everyone says so. Shoot reload repeat.

At night, they all sit around a campfire or at least a lamp, playing cards, telling dirty jokes and talking about home, and pretending their world isn't crumbling. Pretending they aren't all raw and bleeding and festering on the inside.

The others are starting to respect him, even those who always call him _kid_ occasionally call him _Sarge_ now and he doesn't tell them not to.

Sometimes, he's not sure if he could tell anyone his full name anyway. Sometimes all he knows is there's a war and he's got a gun and he's up to his elbows in blood.

When he doesn't know if he's even really human.

It happens all the time, during battle, in the evenings, at night; but he has learned how to retrace his steps, find his way back home, back to the man he was.

 _I met my best friend on a playground in Brooklyn. We were five years old and he was hiding from his mother who'd forbidden him to go out because he was sick._

Shoot reload repeat.

 _We sat next to each other at school, Steve was better than me at maths, I copied off of him until graduation._

Shoot reload repeat.

 _He weighs some 90 lbs; I know this because a couple of times he'd let himself be beat to a pulp before I could get there and I had to carry him home._

Shoot reload repeat.

 _His mom's name was Sarah, she died of TB. Steve lived with me after._

"Hey Barnes, you gonna play poker or what?"

 _They never have shoes his size so he stuffs them with newspapers._

"Sure," he replies, fixes the grin on his lips that doesn't come quite as easily as it used to.

He wins some money, loses all of it the next day. Trades dirty stories with his comrades, writes letters to be sent to his parents, his siblings, to Steve, letters full of half-truths and blatant lies, because they may be stuck in some waiting room to hell, but that doesn't mean they have to make anyone back at home share the adventure.

And when he forgets who he is, he works his way back.

He feels like it takes longer and longer everytime he does it, but he gets there in the end.

.

He takes to carrying around pictures in his pockets. He never looks at them, but it feels good to know they are there. He draws strength from knowing that even if he gets lost, he could pull them out and let his sisters' laughter and Steve's warm smile guide him home.

.

.

 _Steve has never had a girl,_ he goes through his endless mantra in his head while he's waiting for the dust of the explosion to settle, _Steve can play the trumpet but his Mom sold it because she said it wasn't good for his lungs. I had to explain baseball to him because he didn't have a clue._

"Oh putain de merde, je ne vois rien du tout," says Dernier, a guy recruited from French resistance who blissfully ignores the rest of the 107'th incapability to speak French. He fingers his explosives that he carries around everywhere and stares into the veil of dust and smoke clouding the battlefield.

Bucky feels slightly dizzy. Maybe he inhaled too much smoke.

 _Steve missed half of school because he was ill. There's not an illness I could name he's never had,_ he mouths silently, reloading his rifle with slow, deliberate movements.

"Qu'est-ce que tu fous, on n'a pas du temps pour la prière."

When he doesn't reply, Dernier grips Bucky by the shoulder. "T'es encore là, mon pote ? Viens, on peut prier après qu'ils sont morts, les salauds."

"I don't speak French," Bucky informs him absent-mindedly for what is probably the hundredth time.

 _Steve helped me watch my sisters when Mum and Dad went out. He's drawn all their portraits. They all looked so goddamn beautiful on them Dad got real scared he'd be keeping the lads off the property with a gun before long._

"Ça va, fiston ?" asks Dernier and now he's looking at Bucky in a worried kind of way. "T'es vachement pale."

"I'm fine," Bucky says irritably, on a hunch because he has no idea what the hell Dernier is saying.

He feels a little sick. It must be the smoke.

The French either doesn't understand or he doesn't believe him, just gets to his feet and gives Bucky a pat on the back. "Je sais. C'est pas facile." He throws him a smile. "Courage, Buck."

"Sure, whatever," Bucky murmurs. The smoke has lifted. They're getting in position.

.

.

When they take them, Bucky experiences for the first time that you can actually feel so much of a single emotion that it just fries your brain and leaves you feeling nothing at all.

This time, it's fear. Pure, ugly, wild fear. Not of dying, necessarily – if he dies like some of his comrades have, couple of bullets in the head and lights out, that doesn't seem too bad, given the circumstances.

No, what he's scared of are two things. The first, the most prominent, is pain. These godless maniacs that have them, they're sadists, and they will not make it quick.

(He's heard about the concentration camps, mere rumours really, but that doesn't exactly help. It's not much of a consolation to hear these people actually have the _habit_ of making people _work themselves to death._ )

The second fear is different, it's not as loud and roaring in his chest, it's more of a fine streak of guilt and hurt that would be there even if you stripped all the rest from him, and that's knowing what he'll be leaving behind, when dies here. Knowing that when his blood finally paints these tiles red, when his bones just give out and his heart stops, there will be nobody to come home to his mother, his annoying adorable cheeky little shits of sisters, and what's worse, nobody to look after Steve.

He can't do that to them, but he doesn't see a way that doesn't end in this place.

Some of the soldiers spend their nights praying; Dum Dum and Dernier have finally found common grounds, spending them huddled in a corner of their makeshift cells, whispering curses with the same religious fervour, luckily neither of them in a language the guards happen to speak.

Bucky spends them frantically reciting every goddamn happy memory he can think of, wearing his fading photographs thin between his fingers. He _has_ to hold on to that good part of his life, because he doesn't want to find out who he would be without it, because he can feel the memories slipping away from him one by one and if he doesn't come out of here with his memory intact, he'd rather not get out of this place alive at all.

.

Nobody knows what _exactly_ happens to the people that are deemed unfit for work, but what they all know is that if you make a mistake or faint or fall asleep, you're doomed.

Bucky knows that too, but sadly that doesn't mean he can prevent it forever.

He can't remember when he last had feeling in his fingers, and when finally a half-finished shell slips from his grip and drops into the intricate workings of one of the machines, it doesn't come as much of a shock. It was only a matter of time, really – Bucky hasn't slept in five days, he's given half his ration to a kid younger than him who's been crying for his mother all night long and quite frankly he's more than surprised himself he's even still standing upright at this point.

The whole machine stutters to a sudden halt with a deafening, ugly screeching sound, and a handful of men are by his side before he even realises what's going on himself.

He doesn't really know why they would risk their lives just to pointlessly try to protect him _._ Perhaps because after all he's their Sergeant, maybe because he's younger than most of them. Either way.

Dernier unleashes a tidal wave of rapid-fire French at the Nazis closing in on him, the English guy, Fallsworth, stands there with raised hands trying to reason in a calm voice, two or three others rush to his aid as well; Dugan has hauled Bucky behind his broad back and growls at the Germans they'd have to get past him first. But it's no use, because they're all starved and weak and have little to no real fight left in them, and in the end, they _do_ get past Dum Dum without any real effort.

Once again, Bucky is too scared to even feel it. He can't scream, or cry; can't even find the strength to walk anymore, just lets them drag him down a long dreary corridor.

He's going to die.

He has failed everyone he loves – _Oh God, Steve, what will you do without me, you've always been so fucking stupid, oh please God,_ _please if you can't save me, please at least do that –_

He has failed everyone he loves because now he will die and leave them all behind.

That realisation alone feels like death to Bucky Barnes.

They strap him to a table and he wonders numbly why they would do that, if they want to kill him they just have to put a bullet in his head, or a knife or whatever, it's not like he has the strength to fight them, it's not like he would even _try_ to because he _knows_ it's over –

He figures this is his punishment, for not trying harder, for allowing himself to be captured, for not keeping his promise to come back home. And he deserves that, he'll endure it quietly… but if he tries to make his last moments a little brighter, surely nobody could blame him for that…

Bucky retreats into his head the best he can.

 _Steve got his nose broken on the second day of school._

 _We always go to see a game on the weekend, if we can spare the tickets. We took Rachel and Rebecca once, and they both hated it._

It isn't working. He can't see it, not the streets of New York, not their shabby apartment in Brooklyn, not his sisters or his parents… can't even remember what it feels like to be _home._

What he remembers instead is _I shot a boy near a foot shorter than me, a boy with blond hair and a helmet too big for his head, with bravescaredyoung bright eyes,_ what he thinks is _he probably had his Bucky too, waiting for him somewhere, and now he will never come back to him,_ what he thinks is _that kid could've been Steve and I shot him in the face._

Not that. Don't think about that. _Home,_ think of _home,_ come on, you've gotta remember…

He thinks of the photographs, and when he realises he can't reach into his pockets even if the pictures are still there, he forgets how to breathe.

 _Steve's eyes are blue like the sky in summer and the new leafs on the trees in Central Park._

That colour is the only thing that stays with him when black dots begin to dance in front of his eyes and he passes out just as someone rams a cold thick needle into his arm.

 _._

 _._

His world drowns in endless pain. Bucky knows he's killed a lot of people, and he knows now he has finally gone to hell.

 _I'm sorry!_ he screams, over and over, _I'msorryI'msorryI'msorryforgiveme_ , until no sound comes out of his throat anymore – or maybe that's all in his head. Maybe the needles and the knives are, too.

The pain isn't in his head. The pain is everywhere.

The blue, he thinks in a brief moment of blissful clarity, the summer sky blue, that's in his head. That isn't real. It's not real but it's all he has, it hurts too but differently, this hurt is good, it's a part of him, it's protecting him, it's keeping him sane, blue eyes, _Steve_ …

.

"Tell me," says a voice. " _TELL ME."_

 _Tell what?_ he thinks dazedly, then there's a new surge of pain, worse pain if that's even possible.

" _Tell me."_

When he doesn't reply, it comes again, like someone is tearing at every limb while he is going up in flames.

 _"Tell me!"_

" _I DON'T KNOW ANYTHING!"_ he finally gets out, he's not sure how his voice should sound like but he doesn't think this is it. It sounds like an animal, like something kicked and wild.

What he gets in response is pain. His body throws itself against the straps that hold him down without him meaning to, every muscle cramping and his lungs struggling against his ribcage like they want to escape, while he's screaming and sobbing and waiting for death.

 _"Tell me,"_ the voice repeats.

He's so tired. God, he's _tired._ He'd rather die than feel that pain again, and he wrecks his brain for something to say, something to tell them so they'll stop, but his head is empty.

 _Steve is trying to get into the army ever since the war broke out, and I prayed he'd never get in, I never pray there's nobody listening but I'm praying for Steve-_

He can't tell them that.

Anything but that. Anything but Steve. There has to be something, _anything_ else -

 _"TELL ME."_

He finds something, not much, next to nothing, but forces it over his lips nonetheless. His words cut into his lips and warm blood runs into his mouth but he keeps talking, repeating that one thing that he remembers that won't hurt anyone –

"James Buchanan Barnes, Sergeant, 3255785…"

Pain shoots through his veins, eating him up, eating him alive, and there are blades cutting his skin now and he wants to die please God just let me die –

"No," says the voice softly, then, to someone else, " _Das war zu wenig. Nächstes Mal geben Sie ihm mehr_."

Then suddenly the pain is gone and there's just silence. There hasn't been silence before. This can't be good.

He tries to swallow the blood in his mouth, but there's nothing there to swallow.

"James Buchanan Barnes, Sergeant, 3255785," he whispers, over and over and over.

Silence is new, and bad, and he can't let there be silence.

.

" _Buck, you don't have to do this for me,"_ he hears Steve say, a thousand miles away, in front of his derelict apartment building.

"Yes I do, punk, I'm your friend, I'm with you 'til the end of the line, I told you a thousand times-"

" _You'd still be my friend if you weren't running yourself ragged for me, damn it,"_ Steve yells.

"No, pal, that's not how this works…"

Steve doesn't answer, and when he opens his eyes all he sees is a stranger in a white jacket who hits him across the face and says " _sei still",_ whatever that means.

Bucky realises he was talking out loud. He didn't mean to.

Oh Jesus, he's losing it now.

 _Steve,_ he thinks, he's not here, is he, that was all in my head, please God, please let it be in my head…

 _Steve is stupid and brave and Steve never thinks about anything, and he's always playing the hero, if he was here he'd try and save me and he wouldn't even care he'd die…_

His throat tightens and his vision blurs with tears. At some point, he throws up and someone wrenches his head to the side none too gently and vomit runs down his cheek.

The needle is back in his vein and he screams and nearly chokes on the vomit in his mouth.

He feels sick soaking his hair, the sharp stench burning in his nose, before he passes out again.

 _Stay away, kid, don't come here and risk your stupid ass for me, it's fine, I'll die for the both of us…_

.

 _"Bucky?"_

He stops his recital. He knows he shouldn't, he knows there's nobody there, but he just can't help it. He's going crazy, and knowing that makes him sick with fear, but these hallucinations are the only good thing he's got left.

(Sometimes he wonders if this is divine intervention. If he's being shown all the people he loves. Nobody can get him out of here, not even God, but maybe somebody _has_ been listening to his frantic prayers. Maybe he's being given a chance to say goodbye, at least, before he goes.

But then he remembers that's no fucking good, because who cares if _he_ dies at peace? They won't hear him. _They_ won't be at peace. They'll have to live with it.

 _Thanks for nothing,_ he thinks grimly.)

Now the hallucination is ripping off his restraints. Bucky is pretty sure his brain couldn't be doing that. Unless of course this is all a dream… if it is a dream, it won't have consequences if he leaves, right? What is there that could still happen to him?

Fine, so it looks like he's descended into a new level of madness. He might as well humour his sick brain.

"Who's… who's there?

" _It's me. It's Steve."_

Huh. This is new. The hallucinations never tried to touch him before. They never cared whether or not he replies. Also, Steve is wearing clothes he's never seen him wear before, clothes he _would_ never wear, an army helmet, too, and that's not the only thing off about this…

"Steve?" His voice sounds terrible, spread thin and hoarse and broken and nothing like the Bucky Steve would remember. He tries again. No better.

He lets the strange, possibly imaginary Steve help him up. His head is spinning – he hasn't stood on his feet in what might have been _weeks_ for all he knows – and he stares at Steve, dazed, puzzled.

"I thought you were dead," Steve mutters, and Bucky thinks that if his brain is really fabricating this, he's a fucking masochist because that voice is breaking his heart.

"I thought you were smaller," he gives back. It has to be said. Steve, who's always been a head or so shorter than him, and thin as a stick, is now definitely a damn lot taller than him, and Bucky would have no problem hiding behind his back. This is, by far, the weirdest dream he's ever had.

"Come on," Steve says, gripping him awkwardly and dragging him away. Bucky struggles to remember how to move his feet.

"What happened to you?" he inquires stubbornly, nearly falling over as he does – he remembers he used to walk _and_ talk, but can't help but marvel at how he did that.

"I joined the army," Steve answers.

So maybe this is a dream, Bucky thinks, but on the bright side, he's with Steve. He's not gonna forget his name, or who he is, or where or what he's doing or why. He knows. How could he forget?

He's with Steve. He has his whole life right by his side, and if he forgets, he'll just have to turn his head. He's not gonna lose himself.

What's there left to be scared of, really?

.

.

It's not a dream. He realises this only a couple hours later, when Jones and Dugan and Dernier and Fallsworth all crowd around him, hands half-raised like they want to touch him but thought better of it, looking him up and down like they're searching for blood, for mauled limbs, like they're waiting for him to drop dead.

"You alright, Sarge?" It's Gabe who finally speaks, and when Bucky tries to smile he soon realises nobody is buying it. Well shit. His smiles always came like breathing to him.

His heart feels too big, too heavy for his chest, there's something thicker than blood sluggishly creeping through his veins, something cold and crippling -

Who is Bucky Barnes without his smile?

He tries to breathe.

He turns his head to Steve who's walking just behind him, eyeing him like he's expecting him to fall or faint, both hands free and ready to catch him. (Bucky told him not to do that half an hour ago, but, and this is proof this is really Steve, he didn't listen.)

Who is Bucky Barnes without his smile?

 _I'm the one who looks after Steve, because Steve can't keep safe for two hours in a row._

 _Steve always gets himself into trouble and I'm getting him out of it._

Who is Bucky Barnes without his smile?

Well, still Steve Roger's best friend in the world. _Blood brothers,_ they said in elementary school. _Two halves of a whole,_ his Ma used to say.

"Yeah," he says, nodding instead. They seem to believe that, at least. "I'll be fine."

They've gotta believe that. He believes it.

He's back where he belongs, after all.

.

.

Turns out, it's not that easy.

But he's got his memories, and he has learned to thread them through his fingers like a rosary, one by one until he remembers who _Bucky_ is.

He keeps close to Steve, and as long as he can stay there, he'll be alright, somehow.

 _Steve loves those sappy tales of heroes._

 _Until the day I left for England, I'd only lied to him once in my life. I told him I hurt myself on a rugged piece of metal at work when he asked about the scar. Really, Tommy Hagen stabbed me with a switchblade when I told him to leave Steve alone._

 _Steve never had two dimes to rub together, but he always bought me tickets to a game for my birthday, and never told me how he got the money together._

 _Steve saved me. I save him._

He's got this.

.

.

.

Steve vanishes for _two entire days_ when they take out their fourth HYDRA base _,_ and then all of a sudden he just struts back into the camp like it's nothing, like he's just disappeared into the woods to take a leak, looking a little roughed up but no worse than any of them. And that is when Bucky loses it – _loses_ his shit, and all his care and composure – for what might be the first time since they were children, and he launches himself at that stupid huge git with all the force he has left in him, little though it might be. His punch knocks Steve clean off his feet. It's probably mostly the element of surprise, but it counts all the same.

 _"You fucking made me cry, you stupid little shit!"_ he bellows, sitting on his chest to hold him down so he can ram his fists into him, any bit of skin they can find. His head is empty except for all that blinding rage, and Steve just stares up at him, apparently too shocked to even try and fight back.

"You goddamn – careless – motherfucking – idiot, what the _fucking_ hell – were you even _thinking_?"

" _Sarge!"_ comes a disbelieving cry from across the camp, but Bucky hardly even hears it.

" _Qu'est-ce que tu fous, arrête, putain, tu veux le tuer_ –"

The next thing he knows, two pairs of strong hands close around his upper arms and drag him off his hapless victim, he struggles against them but they won't let go.

Steve slowly gets up onto his elbows, still staring at him in utmost shock. There is bright red blood dripping from his nose.

"Bloody hell, Barnes," says Fallsworth to his right in a hushed kind of voice. His face looks stark white.

"What the fuck's gotten into you?" Dugan demands while Jim pulls Steve to his feet.

"Good to see you, cap," Jim mutters and hands Steve a handkerchief to wipe his bloody nose. "We're all very happy in our own ways," he adds drily with glance at Bucky who is still trying to catch his breath, staring at his friend and the bright red blotches on the white handkerchief.

"You good now?" Dugan asks, eyeing him warily. "Not gonna try and kill any of us while you're on it?"

"Qu'est-ce que c'est que cette merde ? T'allais mettre une balle dans ta tête si on le trouverait mort mais si il est vivant tu veux le tuer toi-même, c'est ça ?"

None of them really pays attention to Dernier except for Jones – this is not unprecedented since he's the only one who really understands him – who turns towards him with a warning glance.

Fallsworth finally steps away from Bucky and throws Steve a smile. "It's good to have you back, Captain."

Steve nods absent-mindedly, eyes still fixed on Bucky with something lost and scared sitting in the blue, the white-and-red handkerchief crumpled to a tiny ball in his fist. A smear of red is drying on his lips.

Bucky's vision is slowly returning to normal, and his racing tripping pumping heart starts to slow down.

 _I just hit Steve,_ he thinks, and it's the most terrifying thought he's ever had in his life.

"You okay, Cap?" Jones asks, planting himself between Steve and Bucky so he can get a good look at his captain. "Anything to patch up?"

Bucky stands there, rooted to the spot, off to the side, and stares into empty space.

 _I just hit Steve Rogers. That's Steve's blood on my hands and I made him bleed and_ I just hit Steve _–_

"I'm fine, Gabe," Steve says and it's a goddamn lie _,_ how can he think Bucky wouldn't hear it's a lie –

Bucky's head starts to spin.

He's hurt Steve before, more than once, it happened all the time, they used to make _jokes_ about it…

 _He still remembers how his Ma looked him up and down one night when he came home bloodied and bruised and his shirt all stained with mud and just gave the usual explanation "they were_ hurting Steve _, Ma". She had uttered her usual threat he'd have hell to pay for if the stains wouldn't come off and then she'd shaken her head and muttered:_  
 _"God, I hope you'll ever find some girl you love as much as you love Steve Rogers, James," and when he just threw her a smile, she'd eyed him warily for a moment and added softly: "You_ will _find yourself a girl, won't you? I mean… people are starting to talk, that you are… that you and Steve-"_  
"Jesus _, Ma, what the hell…" he'd stammered, taken aback, "that'd be – that'd be like_ incest _."_  
 _And then another thought had come to his mind and he'd started laughing, could hardly get his words out properly because he was laughing so much. "Besides… could you imagine… remember when I fell on top of him and he… he broke_ three ribs _? Like we_ couldn't _even… I mean… just too heavy for him…"_  
 _His mother had given him a very stern look and told him that was illegal and no laughing matter, but she hadn't quite been able to purge the smile from her lips_.

He's hurt Steve before… but never _meaning to. Never_. He can't even remember how many times he broke something himself trying to _keep_ Steve from being hurt.

 _I just hit Steve, I just made Steve bleed, I just went ahead and_ I just hit Steve…

The others are still taking and it's giving him an unbearable headache. There is blood on his knuckles.

"Steve…" he whispers. Nobody will even hear him, everyone's still talking and what the hell is that noise, they're not at sea, why is he hearing waves…

It's his own blood rushing in his ears, he realises belatedly.

But somehow, Steve _has_ heard – and of course he has.

 _When I was yelling for him from the pits of hell itself, Steve heard, and he came for me and he dragged me out like the fucking hero he's always been, because Steve_ always _hears me._

"It's alright, Buck," he says, very softly, and for some reason he has the nerve to look worried.

"Steve, I'm sorry," he breathes, and the next thing he knows is they're wrapped up in each other's arms as tightly as humanly possible, he could've never hugged Steve like that before, he would've _choked_ him… and maybe he's crying, or maybe Steve is, it doesn't matter, who cares?

"I know," Steve mutters, and Bucky knows he does.

Steve knows he didn't mean to, that he doesn't know what the fuck happened, knows Bucky's scared half to death because he should've never been _capable_ of hitting Steve at all; he knows that in the last two days Bucky couldn't eat and couldn't sleep and couldn't speak a word to anyone because _Steve might be dead,_ he knows he's taken out his gun and put it on the table and stared at it for hours, and he knows the others ended up taking every firearm and every knife he owned from him and took turns on watching over him so he wouldn't do anything stupid.

It goes without saying.

 _Steve would do the same._

"Don't _ever_ do that again, _"_ he mutters then and lets him go. "Don't you ever fucking _dare_ to do that again, Steve Rogers, or I _will_ kill you."

He looks up to see that everyone else is making a great show of deciding what they'll eat for dinner (even though it's a choice between one grey tasteless slime in a tin and a slightly more greenish tasteless slime in a tin), so to give the two of them some privacy, and Steve grins.

"Looks like these idiots would look after you alright, that's good to know."

"I'm not the one who needs looking after, punk," Bucky mutters, shaking his head.

 _And don't think they could've stopped me. Don't think there was anywhere I couldn't follow you, kid._

He doesn't say that. Steve would throw a fit.

 _Steve's always trying to carry the weight of the whole goddamn world, and he has that habit of worrying about all the wrong people._

He clenches his fists in his jacket pockets, falling behind a step so Steve won't see. Captivity's taking a higher toll on him than he'd like to admit, but he'll be damned if he's gonna let anyone see that.

 _Once we got into a fight and Steve had a broken wrist and a dislocated shoulder and got his head knocked into a brick wall, twice, and he fussed all the way home because I had a nosebleed._

He exhales slowly. "James Buchanan Barnes, Sergeant, 3255785, born and raised in Brooklyn, eldest of four, father died of pneumonia," he recites under his breath.

"What did you say?"

Steve's smile has been tainted, Bucky thinks. There's shadows in it.

Fucking war. How dare those Nazi bastards, is there nothing sacred left in this world?

"I said we'd better get some food into you, wouldn't want Captain America to shrink back to your old self in the middle of a warzone or anything," he gives back. His fake smiles are shaky. He'll have to work on that.

 _Steve knows me better than my own mother._

 _Steve dreams about owning a car._

 _Steve…_

.

.

Steve is the last thing he sees in this world before he falls into the abyss.

A part of him is screaming _look away Steve don't watch look away look away look away,_ but another part of him – a very selfish part – is really relieved the last thing he'll see isn't snow but summer sky blue.

.

.

.

.

.

"Buck. Do you remember me?"

Bucky's glad he asks this. If he'd asked about Bucky Barnes, he's not sure he could remember much. But he knows this. He actually _remembers_ doing this. Before. Long ago, so long, even _before..._

He remembers clinging to Steve Rogers like a lifeline.

"Your mum's name was Sarah," he says, almost smiling. _Sarah loved Steve like crazy, but she was even frailer than he was and she died of TB._

 _Steve got his smile from his mum._

 _Steve can play the trumpet._

 _Steve sucks at playing cards._

"You used to wear newspaper in your shoes."

Steve smiles.

Bucky remembers this smile, too, and that's a good feeling.

.

* * *

French lines (Dernier):  
[Oh fucking shit, I can't see a thing.  
What are you doing, we don't have time for prayers.  
You still there, buddy? Come on, we can pray after the bastards are dead.  
You okay, son? You're really pale.  
I know. It's not easy. Chin up, Buck.]  
[What are you doing, shit, stop it, d'you want to kill him -  
What is this shit? You were going to put a bullet through your head if we found him dead, but if he's alive you wanna kill him yourself, is that it?]

German lines (Zola/HYDRA scientist):  
[That was too little. Next time, give him more.]  
[Be quiet.]

* * *

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